White Cube | Hoxton Square

A white neon sign on the facade of White Cube read “slow fade to black.” The gallery name, one imagines, marks an ironic acknowledgment of Brian O’Doherty’s paradigmatic art space. But Cerith Wyn Evans’s cinematic instruction flips the expectations raised by the building squarely on their head: If it wasn’t dealing in dreams and fantasy so much as constructed realities before, it certainly is now. “Look at that picture . . . / How does it appear to you now? / Does it seem to be / Persisting?” is a series of five crystal chandeliers hanging together in the main gallery space. Inspired as it is in look and attitude by Broodthaers’s “Décor” work, the installation is beautifully simple and at the same time densely complex in its intellectual and affective ramifications. One chandelier design originated in an exhibition in Victor Horta’s Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, another has been used